A total solar eclipse will take place on March 20. The path of totality will pass over Svalbard at 10:10 UT and sweep through the fields of view of multiple SuperDARN radars. Totality will last for 2 min 47 seconds. The accompanying plot shows the path of the eclipse with time stamps (credit: Muhammad Rafiq - VT).

Aurélie Marchaudon of IRAP/CNRS is making the arrangements to schedule SuperDARN radars to run in Discretionary Time (DT) for the period 20 March, 08 - 16 UT. One focus of the run will be to observe AGWs caused by the eclipse.

An article lead-authored by graduate student Christer van der Meeren of the Birkeland Centre for Space Science at the University of Bergen has been selected to provide the cover image for the October 2014 issue of the Journal of Geophysical Research - Space Physics. The article examines the occurrence of GPS scintillations and irregularities in relation to a tongue of enhanced ionization that extends into the nightside ionosphere at polar latitudes.

The cover image shows a sequence of maps of total electron content (TEC) obtained from GPS measurements with simultaneous convection patterns obtained from analysis of SuperDARN velocity data overlaid. The circle indicates the field of view of instrumentation located on on Svalbard.

Christer is advised by Prof. Kjellmar Oksavik. The figure was generated with the help of the on-line GPS/TEC plotting tools developed by graduate student Evan Thomas at Virginia Tech and collaborators at MIT Haystack Observatory.

Australian SuperDARN researchers lead by the La Trobe University group and PI John Devlin have been recognized with prestigious awards for excellence in engineering innovation in connection with the design of the Buckland Park digital radar. In September they received the 2014 Victorian Engineering Award for Excellence. In November they were presented with the 2014 Australian Engineering Excellence Award for Innovation. Announcement of the latter can be found on the 'Engineers Australia' web site:http://www.engineersaustralia.org.au/awards/2014-australian-engineering-excellence-awards-winners

Congratulations to John and the entire Buckland Park team!

Photo: Antenna towers of the Buckland Park radar viewed against the setting sun.

PI Nozomu Nishitani of the Solar-Terrestrial Environment Laboratory (STELab) in Nagoya is pleased to announce that the Hokkaido West radar started operation on October 24, 2014. The first echoes were received after extensive testing by the Japanese licensing authority.

Nishitani-san would like to thank all the people who contributed to the completion of the new radar, in particular, Mick Parsons from Leicester University, who travelled all the way to Japan to make final installation of the radar, and Pasha Ponomarenko and Alexey Oinats, who happened to be staying at Nagoya University during this period and helped with setting up and calibration.

Congratulations to Nishitani-san, and to the Hokkaido West radar team!

Photo: Main array of 16 transmit / receive antennas in foreground and interferometer array of 4 receive-only antennas in background.

As announced at the 2014 SuperDARN Workshop held in Longyearbyen, Svalbard, the ownership of the Stokkseyri SuperDARN radar has been transferred from CNRS/LPCE (France) and PI Dr. Aurelie Marchaudon to Lancaster University (UK) and new SuperDARN PI Prof. James Wild. The Stokkseyri radar was constructed in 1994 as part of the first wave of radar construction under the newly-founded SuperDARN collaboration and its first PI was Dr. Jean-Paul Villain. It forms a common-volume pair with the Goose Bay SuperDARN radar.

Jim studied for a degree in Physics with Space Science and Technology before completing a doctorate in solar-terrestrial physics at the University of Leicester. He is the Professor of Space Physics at Lancaster University’s Department of Physics. He was elected to membership in the SuperDARN PI committee at the Svalbard Workshop.